First of all, I agree that the behavior is not optimal. I think it's very obvious from @redux's post above. However, I'm not sure about what the optimal behavior might be, because there are always different interests at stake.
Preventing scrolling in this case would disrupt the workflow for all those that simply click into the field and use the scroll wheel (or two-finger scrolling) and expect the field to cycle through the different values. Also, typing is intentionally disabling scrolling to address [F] Tag Panel problems with 'wheel mouse' - #10 by JJ_Johnson.
I don't have Office, so it's a little bit hard to imagine. What do you mean by single finger scrolling? It sounds like this is just moving the mouse cursor, but it's probably a special feature of your touchpad. Do you know the equivalent of that when using the mouse?
One tricky bit is that the Tag Panel background can't get the focus by itself, there is always one field that has the focus. I prefer to keep it that way for all those who are mainly using the keyboard to navigate between the different UI parts.